Pressure
by Thessaly
Summary: He got to his feet and reached out one hand. “Get up, then. You’re doing no one any good lying flat on your back, dear.” He quirked an eyebrow. “Well, I’m sure something could be arranged, though I doubt you’d enjoy it.”  JS run in, one shot.


**(A/N) **_If this sounds slightly familiar, that's because it contains the remnants of another story I had up earlier. I don't own Labyrinth, I assure you. And my fic? 'Tis a poor, paltry copy, friends, but an honest attempt all the same, so do review. It's gotten to the point where I can't solve the problems, but they remain. Open season! As always, a few references to mythology, music, and general literature that aren't mine, and if you wish to remark on them, I will certainly tell you how clever you are if you. I may even squeak and use exclamation marks._

He leaned in the wide windowsill, several stories up, as the breezes from the Thirteen Precincts toyed with his hair. They were still talking about her down there…all his creatures, hopelessly infatuated with a mere child, a girl with an open, almost offensive, manner; a girl who dressed like a boy and walked with a tossing, carefree stride; a girl who, though admittedly clever, had in the end, only appalling good luck to recommend her. But it still remained unalterably true that she had run his Labyrinth, she had played him at his own game of twists and turns and devious puzzles, and she had won. _She had won_. That rankled almost more than the refusal (almost). How could a fourteen year old child, poised crazily between girl and woman, win through the Labyrinth? It was unthinkable, but it had happened, and as a result she had impressed herself deeply on his strange kingdom. Very deeply. They told stories about her down there, and, more than that, she lingered in his mind.

The Goblin king scowled and shooed the wind away. He did not need to hear anything more about the Cult of Sarah. The bubbles in his hands were fragile, airy as shaped light; the illusion-master's tools. He let one dance on his fingertips, appreciating the exquisite control. _Beautiful_…he looked into it and saw first his own reflection, and then a white house in a little middle-of-nowhere town, cloaked in evening. One of the Otherworld vehicles pulled up, waited a few moments, the engine thrumming, and then a girl slipped out, grinning and waving at the driver. She lingered on the steps, laughing a little. _Ah_, Jareth thought. _Young love. How old was she then?_ He smiled. With young love came dreams, and to him…to him came the dreamers, sometimes. He swung himself off the windowsill.

---

"Did you have a good time?" Karen Williams surveyed her step-daughter as she came in the door.

"Yeah." Sarah was seventeen and it was, Karen thought, high time the girl started having a social life. She spent too much time up in that room of hers reading and playing in her costumes. But then out of the blue, a couple of weeks ago, she'd brought home that nice Ben Stirling. Now she was out quite a bit, with Ben and the other girls. She's growing up, thought Karen, following with a submerged _thank God for that_. Sarah's books made Karen uncomfortable; all those fairies and things that, well, weren't real. "See, honey," she said to Sarah. "I told you getting out a bit would be good for you."

Sarah's mouth quirked in a way that, once, Karen would have distrusted. "Karen, you're so _old-fashioned._" And for a moment her changeling step-daughter sounded like a normal teenager. "I guess it's good for me."

"_You're_ old-fashioned," said Karen. "You and your fairy-princesses and love and dragons."

"Love's old-fashioned?" asked Sarah. Then shrugged, smiled, and was no longer quite normal. "Fine, you win. I did have a lot of fun. But I like doing my own stuff too, you know?"

Karen continued her evening wipe-down of the kitchen table. Sarah tapped her fingernails on the formica countertop, obviously hoping to leave and not sure if she could get away with it. "I worry about you sometimes, Sarah. All that reading can't be good for you, and, you know, why worry about things that aren't there when you can have to much fun with the things that _are_ here, hmm?"

Sarah brushed a hand through her hair – the red streaks had gone in accompanied by Karen's loud complaints, but she had to admit they rather suited Sarah-the-teenager. "Yeah…I guess. I'm going to bed. 'Night."

"Sleep well, honey."

Upstairs, Sarah bounced on her bed. Karen didn't – couldn't – understand that things that weren't there were vastly more interesting than things that were for the very reason that they were not real. She stared up at her ceiling and whispered, "Magic."

Then she bounced up again and found her pyjamas. "I'm a princess," she said, sweeping her dressing gown around her shoulders. "And I've found my prince," she added, curtseying to the picture of Ben tucked in the side of her mirror. "I thank you, kind sir." She smiled at the mirror, then said, wonderingly, "He kissed me. I've had my first kiss, for real." True, it had been a light brush across the lips; a little, awkward peck, because he was very shy, and Sarah didn't know quite what she was supposed to do. It hadn't involved anyone handsome or dashing or rascally, and nobody had killed any dragons. She had read all about the onset of fairy tales and their cultural significance and psychological appeal and all the other boring stuff, but there was still a part of her that continued, obstinately, to believe in the stories themselves. Was it bad to want to be swept of your feet in a moment of breathless delight? Was it bad to want something different from ordinary life? Ben was nice, certainly, but there was so much _pressure_ in the real world…get a crush, get a boyfriend, hold hands, kiss, be branded A Couple. Feeling a bit silly, a bit not-quite-right, she dropped the bathrobe on the ground again and swung her feet into bed, muttering about the strange annoyances and emotional rollercoaster of being a teenage girl. Certainly not fun but at the same time exciting, with the fizz and pop of expectancies. _The terror of knowing what this world is about_…

In her dreams she was walking through a palace, up and down corridors and halls over staircases carpeted in lilac and silver, the walls paneled in dark wood. The corridor in front of her continued to go straight without ever seeming to turn. It reminded her of something, and the niggling feeling followed her almost to the next flight of stairs, when she stopped again. Her lips shaped the mantra, "Don't take anything for granted," and she walked towards the far wall, trying hard to see the world differently. She could still do this; she hadn't forgotten. Not everything. Ludo and Hoggle and Didymus had come to _her_, and it would mean something if she could get to them. Perhaps she wasn't going to dry up and be old and boring and normal if she could _just get back_. She faded through the wall – or it faded through her, she wasn't sure – and she was in another room all together.

She had been here before. Sarah remembered this room where the stairs continued up, or down, or both, to infinity without respect for the conventionalities of the world. She took a deep breath. Just because she thought of up as one way didn't necessarily mean it was. "Things don't work that way in the Labyrinth," some part of her sleeping brain prompted her and she nodded. "It all depends on perspective," Sarah murmured, and stepped off the edge of the platform. As she had hoped, she simply came up on the other side of the platform as though she'd never been anywhere else. She let out the breath she didn't know she'd been holding and jumped as a sound echoed through the room.

"Sarah Williams." She spun around, and saw a man leaning in the doorway of an arch. A tall man dressed in black and gold and red and white, with heeled boots and full sleeves, the cuffs of the shirt trailing into nothing over black gloves. _Him_. Yes, she remembered him; when your pre-adolescent fixation had the side-effect of being real in another place, you damn well weren't going to forget him. You were going to remember that hard face with its slanting brows and painted eyes, the thin mouth set in a straight line, the explosion of strange, feathered hair.

Warily, she said, "Jareth. _What_ are you doing to me this time?"

He moved towards her and she backed up – "oh, _no_ you don't" – and then stepped backwards into the nothingness at the edge of the landing. She was falling then, tilting and spinning, and screaming bloody murder. Sarah hated heights; hated them because of the dreadful stomach-lurch of free-fall. She had the vague impression of something falling with her in a fluttering mass of fine cloth and feathers and glitter but she barely registered it before she landed heavily, half-blind and panicking, on something soft. She struggled, kicked, and rolled over several times, which was rather harder than it sounded. The floor was slick and smooth beneath her and her hair kept getting caught and she felt like she was trying to fight a whirlwind.

They rolled over one more time and stopped, two hands pinning Sarah's shoulders to the ground and enough weight on her knees to keep her from moving. Tails of long light hair hung about her face and, with an explosive sigh, she gave up.

Sarah stared up into the face above hers. "Jareth." She said again, not sure what the correct response was here, and, frankly, not particularly interested. To her, Jareth the Goblin king meant danger, irritation, reluctant fascination, and extra baby-sitting. She still hadn't forgiven him for that bit.

The man leaning over her sat back, straddling Sarah's legs. She still couldn't move, but it was slightly less off-putting. "Most certainly. The lord and master who shall be obeyed in all things." He put out one gloved hand and took Sarah's chin, tilting the girl's head this way and that. "Fancy you dropping in on me this way. It _has_ been a while," he said cheerfully. "Time runs differently in the Otherworld."

"I suppose so," said Sarah. She was nervous; diminished by too much power too close. And the hand holding his chin gripped a little too tight, and the leather felt strange. "Probably two years, something like that. Did you miss me?"

The hand squeezed a little tighter and dragged Sarah's chin around so they faced each other. "That," said Jareth softly, "is a most impertinent question, lovely Sarah." He leaned close and Sarah felt squashed, threatened by simple nearness. "You carry destruction in your wake, sweet. I've only just finished repairing from your last visit. I should think my various subjects missed you more, but…yes, perhaps I did miss you, just a little." He sat back. "I am not here for your pleasure, Sarah Williams; you are here at mine. Do you remember that."

"Yes, sir," Sarah muttered. She was scared, tingly, her senses buzzing from too much intensity.

Jareth smiled very slowly. Sarah felt, to her great irritation, that the Goblin king was actually enjoying this…this…antagonism. That was the only word for it. Deliberate, provoking antagonism. "Oh dear, see how she resists," said Jareth softly. His laugh brushed across Sarah's face like fingers. "Sarah love, you'll need to do better than that." He let go of Sarah's chin and sat back again, hands resting on soft, sleek trousers. "Now," he said. "I believe we should address the question of why you are here." Sarah lay still. She didn't care if she was dreaming or not, but she hurt; she was annoyed. And the last thing she needed was to deal with this…person. Maybe if she didn't do anything it would just stop. "Ye Gods," said Lord Jareth. "Must I do both sides of this dialogue?" He shrugged extravagantly, then got to his feet and reached out one hand. "Get up, then. You're doing no one any good lying flat on your back, dear." He quirked an eyebrow. "Well, I'm sure something could be arranged, though I doubt you'd enjoy it."

Sarah didn't answer. She ignored the gloved hand dangling into her vision. She felt petulant and irritated and young and she was going to be a nuisance until she felt better. She played this game with Karen a lot. She should, however, have known better to be childish in the presence of the Goblin king; not because Jareth was especially grown up, but rather the opposite.

Jareth waved his hand again, sighed. "What, no response from the indefatigable Williams? Now, why is that?" He leaned over, grabbed Sarah's arms and hauled her bodily upright. They were both standing now, close together, and Jareth was several inches the taller. "Am I not being provoking enough?" Sarah realized that she disliked being pushed around a great deal; no one bossed her but Dad, and that was different. _So_, said Sarah's brain, _letting him get control is bad_. Something else kicked in a few seconds later. _…wait, define bad?_ Her eyes focused on the collar of a white shirt that made of something pristine and silky, elaborately embroidered in white thread. He was very pale, Sarah thought, distractedly. Weren't goblins normally swarthy? She could see the tracery of pale blue veins just under the surface of the milky skin, the beat of a pulse in his throat, the beautiful line of his chin. They were very close; close enough for her to feel him breathing and smell a light scent of outdoors and sweat. _Dear God, this is not happening…_

Sarah turned her face up, ready to tell this person that yes, he was being plenty provoking enough. Or possibly let loose some sharp retort – if she could think of a good one. In the end all she could do was stare at the lines and angles of Jareth's face, arrested by sheer power and something she couldn't even describe. Something that began with magnetism and trailed off into confusion and a dry-mouthed waiting silence. He also had the slowest smile Sarah had ever seen. It seemed to take ages for one incredibly self-satisfied smirk to crawl across the man's face. Then he leaned forward, amused and confident, and there was a brush across Sarah's mouth that might have been a kiss, might have been a breath of wind, might have been her overactive imagination. Then a soft voice whispered in her ear, "No fear, Sarah Williams," and Jareth let her go. Sarah stumbled backwards, skidded on the floor, and sat down hard. Jareth tipped his head back and laughed for a long time; Sarah thought she might cry.

Finally the Goblin king sank to the ground, lounging a good distance from Sarah, and said, "Dear child, I believe you're trespassing."

"What?"

He shrugged. "In a fashion. You're dreaming, Sarah. I doubt you could ever return physically to my kingdom, but when you sleep, your mind…wanders sometimes."

He was a presence; indubitably _there_, as strange and not right as his room with no rules. He made her giddy. He made her nervous. "Why? Why now?"

Jareth wrapped his hands around one bent leg and rested a his chin on his knee. "I have no idea. Perhaps you are growing up, Sarah. I flatter myself that I helped you with that process once before."

She grimaced. "But I don't want to be a grownup. I mean, I do and I don't. It's, um, complicated." She scuffed one bare foot on the smooth floor.

One corner of Jareth's mouth twitched. "Candid as always. There is little I can do to prevent that." He stood in one fluid, graceful gesture and put both hands on his hips, looking down at her. "But what am I to do with you now, Sarah? You are trespassing."

"I'm not!" she said, indignant, then realized that if she was dreaming, she probably was. "Well, I didn't mean to."

"That," he said quietly, "does not change the fact that you are."

Sarah bit down on her lip. "I can't do anything about it. You make me go away if it bothers you so much." She glanced up at him, alarmingly tall. "And stop looming!" She scrambled inelegantly to her feet and tried to look at him. It was hard, even when the height difference was significantly less.

"Tempting," said Jareth, and his eyebrows flicked up. "But I have rules I must follow, and," he sighed in light mock-sorrow, "one is that of hospitality." He waved a hand and Sarah took a step backwards.

"What – what are you doing to me?" A mirror materialized out of the air before her and she gasped. It was a ball dress, though not, she remembered, quite the one she had worn before. Green silk spilled to her feet from a green and gold brocade bodice and the sleeves, made of a fine, iridescent fabric, belled from her elbows. Stones the blush-red of pomegranates flamed at her wrists and neck and her hair glowed with amber. A ball dress like she'd imagined for herself, once or twice. "It's beautiful," she whispered. She turned to look at Jareth, and her wide eyes, unchanged from when she was fourteen, made him start. "You've turned me into a princess."

"Yes," was all he said. "Hospitality. It's what you want, isn't it?" He held out his arm. "Come with me?"

Sarah eyed him with an old suspicion. "Why?"

He smiled a little and Sarah caught a glimpse of pointed teeth. "Hospitality demands it, among other things."

"I don't remember hospitality coming up the last time," Sarah remarked, not moving.

"That," he said lightly, "was different." He put out one gloved hand and tipped her chin up. "Business and pleasure, you know."

"Oh," said Sarah. "Well then."

He held out a crooked arm again. "So. Will you come?"

"What are you going to do with me this time? Put me back in the oubliette?" She watched him warily. Oh, she'd thought about him a few times…sometimes…a lot, and she'd wanted to see him again, maybe, but face-to-face he was a little more dangerous than she'd expected. It was amazing how much you forgot when you weren't exposed to the reality of a very rude and rather charming man.

"It is not so, and was not so, and Gods forbid it should be so," said Lord Jareth, King of the Goblins piously. "Will you come downstairs?"

Sarah gave up. "Why – yes, I suppose so."

After going down several flights of twisting stairs and going around a number of corridors, they entered a room hung in sapphire-toned silk. Jareth went to the sideboard and broke a round loaf of bread, murmuring something as he did so. He dipped both in a carved silver bowl and held out one piece to Sarah. She took it. "What's this then? More hospitality?"

"Bread and salt," said the Goblin king, nibbling a corner daintily. He tossed a light glance at her. "It signifies that neither guest nor host bear ill will." Sarah bit down on her bread, and discovered that there was rather a lot of salt.

It was, she supposed, a tour of the strange castle she'd only been in once. Playing the courteous guide and explaining the books and trinkets and tapestries scattered throughout the building, Jareth showed her the Labyrinth through his eyes; a kingdom of unexplained oddities and grotesques, full of strangeness and unpredictable twists. A realm of endless chance and rough magic, filled with the creatures she had seen before, and many she had not. _More things than are dreamt of in my philosophy_, Sarah thought, and smiled. There was beauty there, if you looked for it. Sarah wondered if her perception of the Labyrinth had changed from when she was fourteen and had wanted to see monsters to fight and problems to solve, or whether it had always been this way: deeper, wilder, harder to define, at once playful and intimidating. They came to rest, finally, on a balustrade. "That is the Forest of the Eleventh Precinct," he said pointing out to a waving expanse of leaves beyond the city walls.

"Hmm," said Sarah, trying to pay attention. The waving tree tops were tinted oddly blue in the lavender-colored dusk light. Knowing the Labyrinth, there was probably something ferocious lurking under them, but from this vantage, they were oddly lovely. Beside her Jareth shifted slightly, and she glanced up at his profile, stern and distant, outlined against the light flooding from the windows. He gave the impression of a wild energy leashed and compacted into a human frame; the owl's ruthlessness and quick, cold, dive, with the goblin's grasp for odd magic and teasing. She wondered, abruptly, what the fabric of his shirt felt like, or his strange hair. He had been near her earlier and the effects still hadn't worn off. Once, when she hadn't wanted or understood it, he had said he loved her. Once, he had held out her dreams in a glass bubble. Once… She whispered, "Jareth."

He turned. "Yes?"

She played with a bracelet and it glittered uncertainly in waning light. "What happened?"

He smiled. "What _do_ you mean?" But he turned his back on the forest and rested his elbows on the stone of the balcony, glancing down at her. "In truth, Sarah?"

She nodded. "If it's not too hard for you to tell the truth, of course."

"I'll manage. In truth…in truth, very little. You are older and, and I think that you…see things differently."

"Is that why the Labyrinth looks kinder?"

He laughed. "Sarah, the Labyrinth looks kinder because you are behind good stone walls with a bird's eye view." He smiled faintly. "Nothing is safe close up, and very few things are more beautiful."

She swallowed. "You mean me, don't you?"

"The noble art of circumnavigation is wasted on the young," said Jareth dryly. "Are you always this hurried? It must make your trysts rather less enjoyable than otherwise…"

"What are you talking about? Oh." Sarah flushed the color of her jewels. "I'm not going to answer that. It's not your business anyway, who I," she made a face, "_tryst_ with."

"Sarah. Sarah, Sarah, Sarah…" Jareth lifted an eyebrow. "Of course it's my business. Everything is my business." He twisted a coil of her hair around his finger. "Especially you."

"I am?"

"You are."

"So that part didn't, um, change?"

The Goblin King tipped his head back and laughed, and when he looked at her again, there was a little glitter of hilarity still in his eyes. "Oh, Sarah." He stepped a little closer, one hand twisted in her hair. "Until the day that you stop seeing me the way you do, you may take it for granted that 'that part' will not change."

She swallowed. He was a little too close. "And how do I see you, then?"

He smiled, very slowly. "As an adversary; as an enigma, attractive in spite of myself; as a lover; as a charming, annoying sort of fellow; as a controlling, manipulative scoundrel," he leaned down, his other hand caressing her cheek, "and as the embodiment of all the wonder and magic you lack in your other life. I told you, I am exhausted from living up to your expectations."

_He's going to kiss me_. The thought frightened her a little, and intrigued. "I do?"

"You do. You have," his hand whispered across her cheek and she shivered at the sleek of leather, "an inarticulate longing for wonder, for enchantment, for magic, my Sarah." He added as a breath of afterthought, "Sarah. _My_ Sarah." He let one hand trail down the back of her neck, down her back, making her gasp a little.

It took a few minutes of confusion for her to grasp the implications of what he had said, and when she did, she tried to get out of his arms. "_Your_ Sarah?"

Cynical eyebrow up; defenses up. He continued to hold her close. Oh dear. "Certainly. Whose else would you be? No, you are _my_ Sarah; my incandescent and brilliant princess."

"Really? I don't remember that part." She looked down at her beautiful, beautiful dress. "Oh, I see. Your hospitality; bread and salt. Do you try to seduce all your guests?" She wasn't sure if he actually winced or not; it might have been her imagination. "And this is how you see me, as your Sarah? Well, this – this isn't me, Jareth. This is only a little part of me."

He looked down at her, eyes momentarily unguarded, and oh so close. "I tried, once, to give you your dreams; do you remember? The offer," his mouth twitched a little, "the offer still holds. I would give you all the beautiful things in my Labyrinth." He ran one hand along her arm tantalizingly slowly, lifting her hand and twirling her like a dancing partner or a pretty doll. "I would give you beauty, amazement, magic; I would give you amber and gold and diamonds, lapis and opal; pendants of frozen fire; silks and rubies and small, flashing stones that whisper incessantly of stars; light in drinking goblets, rain caught in crystal, silver for your dark hair…"

Sarah stepped away, and said distinctly, "And what would that make me but another beautiful thing in your Labyrinth?" She looked down and focused her mind, willing the skirts away. She stood now in jeans and a loose shirt, her hair plaited back. "This is me, Jareth. Me for real. I'm not part of your collection, I'm not for you to lavish presents on. I'm just a half grown-up girl with a big imagination. Just Sarah." Her voice trembled.

"You refuse me," he said blankly. "Again? By all Gods, what is it that lends you power, my child?" He caught her arm and pulled her back to him, tipping her face up, hands buried deep in her hair. She squirmed, couldn't move. Was, for the first time in her life, totally powerless. Jareth examined her face with an almost clinical curiosity. "I have shown you this night a glamour that would bring any woman to my bed for months."

She stared up at him, angry and trapped. "You _what_?"

"A glamour, wise Sarah. Nothing much; a little change to how you see your world." He loosened one hand to touch her face lightly . "You are so insistent on seeing what isn't there that it's not crime for me to…assist you."

Sarah twisted away and said, "A _glamour_. I don't even – I can't – . What is that? Pressure, artfully applied to just the right levers. A half-priced game of smoke and mirrors to make the starry-eyed heroine fall into your arms, was that it?" Her voice began to raise and she found a thread of anger, bright and hard and sparking little flames of temper, "Are you going to tell me a story? You need to finish it. What happens next? A quarrel or an adventure, and then I would be back in your embrace to rule the Labyrinth beside you? Or would you keep me in your private chambers for amusement?" She gave a brittle laugh. "Oh dear Lord…they say _I_ have an overactive imagination."

Then she looked at him properly and stopped talking on a little gasp. He was watching her, eyes focused with an unnatural concentration on her face. She felt she was being observed like a specimen; alien and different. He wasn't listening though; only watching intently. "Are you even listening to me?" she said. He didn't move, just stood leaning against the balcony with that lazy smile, a chilly figure, glittering and implacable. Sarah set her jaw. Toby could have warned him; so could Matt Lovett, who had run afoul of Sarah on the playground in seventh grade. "What am I, Jareth?" Sarah demanded. She was being as irritating, as rude, as unfair as she knew how. Of course it had no effect; he was a master at this game. "You know what you are, but what about me? Make up your mind and stop trying to make me dance. Am I your pretty little toy? Your game? Your one true love?" And she pulled back one hand and slapped him. Her hand stung. He jerked, reverie broken, and one of his hands flashed up to grip her wrist and force it down, twisting enough to bring tears to her eyes.

It was a quick movement, turning her so that they faced one another. Then he pushed her inexorably backwards until the stone dug into her lower back and she had nowhere left to retreat. She realized two things simultaneously: the first, that she had never before seen him really angry and the second, that she had provoked something huge and unstoppable, just held in check. She swallowed, feeling that something had been broken. "Get out." His voice was chilly, each syllable shaped with a precise, diamond-hard clarity. "You trespass, you accept my hospitality, and you insult _me_. Get out now, Sarah Williams, before I throw you out." He seemed to grow taller, thinner, more dangerous. He repeated it a third time, as the twilight deepened around his figure, pale as marshlight or a malicious will o'the wisp. "Get. Out. Now."

"I – I'm sorry," she stammered, desperately searching for the right thing to say. "I didn't mean – Please don't be angry." But that wasn't enough, and she made the mistake of telling the truth. "But it was your fault, you have to admit. Tricking me like that; it's not _nice_."

He pushed her and she fell the full six stories, the rushing air dragging a scream out of protesting lungs.

And then she woke up, breathing hard and sweating and angry. In the middle of it all, oddly, she wanted to cry.

---

In the Labyrinth, Jareth remained on the balcony, tall and very still. Around him, the wind picked up as the breezes sensed their master's upset. Clouds bled in, covering the new moonlight and threatening rain. With the last trailing fragments of his restraint, Jareth stepped through a fold in his kingdom and into the waving limbs and falling branches of the Forest of the Eleventh. Once there he allowed himself to lose his temper in glorious gusts of wind and thrown branches. Anger at her, at the Labyrinth for loving her, anger at himself for – for anything. For welcoming her, for hurting her, for watching her, for letting her find those pressure points he thought invisible. Anger that he _was_ angry. If someone set fire to a tree in this forest, no one would notice. And so he watched the flames die down with a furious glee, allowing himself for once to indulge the pure joy in destruction and chaos that lay a little too close to the heart of all goblins, Kings or otherwise.

Later, daubed in blown ash, fine shirt black with smoke stains, he turned away from his private holocaust and went in search of the well. He found it eventually and rested his hands on the rim, letting go of tension, memories, little hurts, little aggravations, little moments of wonder and astonishment. The water in the bucket beneath him moved a bit in the strong wind and he saw, for a moment, a girl's face. _Sarah_. She was beautiful angry, alive with a spirit he'd underestimated too many times. He'd been foolish to watch her, but by all Gods, she was a lovely creature… He snorted. He had certainly been rewarded. She had struck him. _Him._ King and Sovereign by right, with eight unbroken generations of lineage behind him, to be bested by child of seventeen; and for the second time no less. A child? Perhaps not. Not anymore. He broke the picture impatiently with one hand, scooping water over his face and letting the cold trickle down his neck and wet his shirt. _Why were we disputing_, he wondered, scooping up more water. _Childish, foolish indulgence._ He let the water run through his fingers, a little burnt from the fire that had burst out of his control. The forest and water murmured of something else akin to indulgence: _Love. Love that requires trust beyond reason, beyond logic, beyond hope_. "Quiet," he said to the Labyrinth. It didn't talk, precisely, nor was it exactly sentient, but occasionally it could make opinions known. "Leave the old-fashioned words out of this."

Jareth, Lord of the Labyrinth and King of the Goblin City, scowled, upended the entire bucket over his head, and began walking back to his castle. He calmed the storm as he walked, rebuilding internal walls, closing private doors, and replacing his lost restraint. He was a king; the least he could do was act like one. And if he thought he might cry for the loss of an image smashed by two pairs of clumsy hands, no need know that but him.


End file.
